This project is called RULE: Revitalized Undergraduate Laboratory Environment. It is the first phase of the development of resources envisioned to eventually embrace the whole curriculum with an integrated environment that brings all computing resources to undergraduate students through the same man-machine interface. This interface will evolve in an upwardly compatible way from the one developed by Xerox PARC and popularized by Apple Macintosh. They will begin the first phase by building a networked Macintosh SE laboratory to support programming I and II, files processing, data structures and algorithm analysis and the computer organization and computer networks courses. The project will be an innovative one coupling Karel the Robot programming teaching environment with Modula-2 as the programming language in programming I. These courses will be joined by the remainder of the core courses and many electives in the second phase of development. That phase will include IBM 370 assembler programming on the Macintosh once they complete the cross-assembler, and the University reaches their building with the evolving campus computing network. This second phase will support most of the upper-division courses on more powerful, workstation class Mac II machines. Although they have a different architecture, the human interface is the same. That is why the Macintosh SE was chosen for the first phase that comprises this project; it is part of an evolving, comprehensive environment for computing.
